A communication network generally comprises a switching fabric. The switching fabric can route a message form its source-node to a destination-node that the message is destined for, by switching between a plurality of switching-nodes. The switching fabric can become overloaded due to various reasons, such as a heavy traffic of messages waiting to be switched, a non-operational link in the switching fabric or a slow rate of service for switching the messages. Explicit Congestion Notifications (ECNs) are used for signaling about an overload caused in one or more switching-nodes. In some communication networks, such as InfiniBand (IBA) communication networks, a switching-node can detect overload and can mark messages that lead to overload with an ECN. The messages are marked with an ECN by turning on one or more bits in header of the messages. The switching-node forwards the messages with an ECN bit in the header to one or more destination-nodes of the messages. An ECN destined for a destination-node is known as a Forward Explicit Congestion notification (FECN). After receiving the marked messages, the destination-nodes can send the ECNs obtained in the messages to the source-nodes. An ECN destined for a destination-node is known as a Backward Explicit Congestion Notification (BECN). The source-node reduces the injection rate of the messages in the switching-node based on a frequency of receiving BECN-messages. The injection rate is reduced until no BECN-messages are received or the injection rate of messages into the switching-node is low enough to avoid further overload of the switching-node.
In the above listed method, a switching-node is deemed overloaded only if the injection of the plurality of messages increases beyond a predefined threshold value. Further, to remove overloading a source-node alters the injection rate of messages based on the frequency of receiving BECN-messages. Additionally, the BECN-messages do not include information corresponding to severity of overload in the switching-node.